The Grax Domain

30 Nov 2006 Unconscious Mutterings 001

1. Rhyme :: Thyme
2. Substantial :: Money
3. Instant :: Coffee
4. Greed :: is good
5. Brad :: Majors (Asshole!)
6. Season :: tickets
7. Accomplished :: Accomplishment
8. Invite :: Invitation
9. Sparkle :: Sparkle
10. Rainbow :: Six

Unconscious Mutterings

29 Nov 2006 The week I was in Plymouth

Last week my girlfriend and I had ourselves a week off work to go on holiday. The exotic location we decided to go to was in the south of England, to sunny Plymouth, a few hours drive away from my house. Well it wasn't really sunny. In fact it rained most of the time we were there. That's Cornish weather for ya.

But despite the rains we had a really good, chilled-out time.

We stayed in a little cottage place in a village just outside of Plymouth. The house was great, so nice and cosy. The kind of place you just want to lounge around on those sleepy days and not do much, especially in front of the log fire. So it was ok that it rained most of the time. The only real complaint about the place was the parking. It was like trying to slide in between two round people at the supermarket, only their flesh is not soft but more like jagged rocks that'll scratch your paintwork if you mess up. The danger was there almost every day. Very cramped indeed.

A lot of time was spent lounging around the house but we did get to do other things. We saw friends in Plymouth and I was shown around the shopping centre and The Barbican, the older part of the city near the coast filled with trinket shops and other oddities. The whole place reminded me of Southsea in Portsmouth, only more posh and smarter.

I also did something that I don't do very often; I walked around the area. We set off on mini-hike around the area to take in the country atmosphere, as well as the rocky beaches nearby. I was even given a cheap pair of wellies for my feet by my girlfriend, so I could stomp around in the mud. Which I did.

I felt like how I looked; dashing.

On the day before the day we had to return home we went to our last destination; The Eden Project in Cornwall. It's essentially a huge garden in an old expired clay mine area in Cornwall with a couple of bio-domes that contain more exotic plants from place like the tropics and the Mediterranean. Again the weather was rainy and miserable but it didn't dampen our experience one bit. It was a shame there were no animals save for a few robins that managed to get into the domes but I guess the focus is plants so it's to be expected. Despite my initial reservations I ended up enjoying the whole experience, being around nature (in an artificial way). Even after I learnt another interesting fact about myself when I was skating around the ice rink:

I can't skate very well.

In fact it took me 40 minutes, the entire session, for me to actually do baby-steps (or is it baby-skates) around the ice rink rather than flaying my arms around like it was going out of style, gripping on the edge for dear life, and generally causing a traffic jam.

The last day came and we had to drive home, but not until we stop by some tourist traps, namely the Otters and Butterfly sanctuary and the House of Marbles.

So that was my week off.

15 Nov 2006 The Grax Domain v2.0

After several months (on-off) of hard work I can now reveal to the public Grax Domain version 2.0.

Doesn't look like it's changed much does it? Well... I like this layout. But there are changes. In fact there are the following changes:

• First thing you'll notice is the navigation menu. There's bits popping out! That's the power of CSS! This way you'll be able to access the pages you want quicker
• The archiving of past entries has been restructured and tidied up a bit
• You can now search through past entries
• You can change the layout of the site (as before) but look what happens when you mouse over the skin link. A thumbnail pops up! Wheee!
• There's a couple of new layout available. Nothing graphically amazing, but mostly designed to make this site easier to read. Accessibilities the buzz-word (or something like that). Also the existing layouts Original and Hunk have been remade.
• There's now a sitemap.
• There;s now a proper emailing form that you can use to contact me. Handy if you don't have an email client like Outlook.
• There's some new stuff that's been added and updated here and there.
• The Magic 8 Ball's results page has been removed. It's been filling with spam far too often and I don't know if anyone actually reads the results. It just seems like too much hassle. Let me know if you think this is wrong. Besides the 8 Ball will get an update in the future.
• I've removed the 'Image Security' thing for the comments pages and replaced it with a tick box. It seems to be working fine for The Art of Grax, so I don't see why it shouldn't work here. I'm going to trial it for a while and see what happens
• I made a fav icon for the site. Aren't I special? =D

12 Nov 2006 Wicked: The untold story of the Witches of Oz Musical review

I'm not going to say that it's wicked. That would be far too easy and I bet that witty remark has been said to death a thousand times before.

But it was very good, that much is true.

It is based on the novel Wicked It is a story that tells the tale of the Wicked Witch of the West (aka Elfaba Elphaba) in her earlier years before her confrontation with Dorothy.

It sheds a different light on the Wicked Witch of the West.

It has a bit of a weak start (standard issue 'background filler' storytelling), but quickly developed into an enjoyable show.

It has great music, spectacular sets, eye-catching costumes and fantastic singing; especially from the stand-in for the lead role WWOTW (note the stand-in, not the official lead actress).

It was a very good show to watch that captured the essence of the novel.

But, according to various sources that have both seen the musical and read the novel, the musical's first half skips over large chunks of the story in the book and the second half was completely re-written for the musical. It's been speculated that it has something to do with making the musical a more family-orientated show, whilst the book is much darker and more adult.

Hmm... it makes me want to read the book now. And all the other Oz books too.

Anyway, Wicked is a good musical and it's worth going to see on stage.

GRAX RATING: 3.5/5

I bet there will be a movie based on this musical, like they did with The Producers. Which is a bit of a shame as I'd rather they based it on the darker novel.

8 Nov 2006 Oh S---, we ain't in Kansas no more

Last Friday was the same week as Halloween and a few days before Guy Fawkes Day, so naturally there was a Halloween/fireworks party involved. Any old excuse to get dressed up right? Anyway my girlfriend and I were invited to this party hosted by a couple of friends of ours and we thought it'd be good to go as one theme, like a couple and stuff. We decided on The Wizard of Oz, she went as the Wicked Witch of the West and she looked pretty darn good too. But what was I to go as?

Then I had a brainwave.

And this is the result...




Not the best photos ever but you get the idea. Thankfully there are some better photos taken by other.

Anyway we attended the party and it was rather spiffy. Everyone made a really good effort dressing up as various things (including a guy dressed up as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show). For some reason the hostess couldn't stop laughing at my costume. I thought I looked rather good actually.

After a few drink a few of us decided to do a test run on the fireworks in the back garden. So a rocket was planted at the end of the garden about 5 metres away from everyone. It was a bitter cold night and I was feeling the full effects of it. Still I suffered to look good. The rocket was lit and it started to shoot up into the air.

But something went wrong.

Somehow the end of the rocket got knocked and it started spinning wildly out of control. And it headed straight for us! We all tried to scatter away from the sparkly banger but there wasn't much room. I remember doing nothing more than stepping a few steps away and cowering, fearing for my limbs. Sparks were flying and the hissing of the rocket could be heard, time was running out.

It then went off. With a nice big bang and a white flash. I bet it's the closest thing I'll get to experiencing a flash bang grenade going off near me.

We all looked around to see if anyone was hurt. Luckily no one was hurt, just a little bit deaf and shooken up. However my pretty dress got burnt and I had a hole in it! Not good.

Still the party carried on, we all mingled and had fun and we even ended the night with more fireworks, although some of us stayed indoors for safety.

Now, what am I going to do with my ruby-red Vans?

1 Nov 2006 X-Men 3 movie review

Remember when I ranted on about how I felt that X-Men 3 was going to be rubbish because of a whole bunch of fan-boy reasons? Well, turns out it wasn't that bad.

I mean it's not award-winning material, but it wasn't that bad.

The plot for this movie in a nutshell is the government has developed a way of permanently neutralising the mutant gene, which turns mutants into normal humans (or 'curing' them in their words). Naturally this causes a bit of an upset in the mutant community, and the X-Men get involved. Oh and Jean Grey is alive but is much more powerful and has a split personality called Phoenix, who is very mean indeed.

I quite liked this film because it made an obvious statement that says "This has nothing to do with the Marvel Universe. We're going to change lots of things but it's got nothing to do with the Marvel Universe so quite yer whining". For example (I don't want to give away too much detail of the movie) there are a few major characters that die. It makes you take notice and think "Oh... They're actually dead... They're not coming back... How controversal". It was rather refreshing.

I was right about The Juggernaut though. He was rather pants. He wasn't big, he shouldn't be a mutant and the in-joke reference was a little uncalled for.

Bottom line is X-Men is an ok movie. You down really need to watch the previous X-Men movies, well you down really need to watch this movie to be honest, it won't enrich your lives any more than it is. It's a bit of no-brain fun. Fanboy and non-fanboy alike will feel equally indifferent about it.

A DVD rental at the most if you can get it for a buck or something.

GRAX RATING: 2/5

... Oh yeah, Hugh Jackman was pretty awesome. But then I quite like him anyway.